In a 30-minute speech at a conference on the promotion of peace and human rights in South-East Europe, organised in Berne by the Swiss Foreign Ministry, Del Ponte said it was obvious that Croatia would be doing even less to locate Gotovina once it started EU membership talks.
Del Ponte commended the well-articulated and consistent policy of the EU towards South-East European countries, stressing that the prospect of joining the EU was the generator of changes in those countries and that the EU had the strength to launch reforms in them.
She urged keeping the strict conditions for the admission of new members as defined in various EU documents, including the so-called Copenhagen criteria, so as to prevent mistakes which occurred during the admission of countries to the Council of Europe, when the criteria were lowered.
Del Ponte thanked the EU for setting full cooperation with the ICTY as a membership condition.
Without the EU's strong support for the ICTY the enforcement of justice would be a sad failure. Croatia and particularly Serbia and Montenegro have been cooperating with the tribunal only thanks to the international pressure. Their cooperation is not perfect, nor full and the serious improvements achieved over the past year and a half are definitely the result of a well-articulated and consistent EU policy, Del Ponte said.
She expressly opposed the launching of talks on stabilisation and association between the EU and Serbia and Montenegro in early October unless Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic was handed over, and added that if done, this would amount to a passport for impunity.
The Hague tribunal chief prosecutor also criticised Croatia. Speaking about the creation of myths and "selective memory" about the 1990s war events, she said that Croatia in August celebrated the 10th anniversary of Operation Storm as a great and heroic liberation operation of Croatian forces, while crimes committed in the course and after the operation were mentioned only marginally.
More than 100,000 Serb civilians were forced to leave the country and several hundred were killed, not to mention the plunder and destruction of property which made their return almost impossible, Del Ponte said.
Del Ponte's political advisor Jean-Daniel Ruch told Hina that the form of Del Ponte's next report on Croatia's cooperation with the tribunal, which she is expected to submit in mid-September, had not been agreed with the EU Presidency yet.
Ruch said there were three possibilities - Del Ponte may send a letter to the EU, participate in a meeting of the task force for Croatia, or take part in a meeting of EU foreign ministers on October 3.
Del Ponte is expected to hold a news conference in Berne this afternoon.
The Berne conference will also include three round table discussions on victims, property repossession by refugees, and the fight against people smuggling in the region. The head of the Croatian government's office for displaced persons, returnees and refugees, Lovre Pejkovic, and Vesna Terselic, head of the Zagreb-based non-governmental centre for the documentation of war crimes "Documenta", are also attending the conference.